Microsoft Word in the Classroom

1 Graduate-Level Continuing Education Unit, Brandman University

Course Instructor and Author: Donny Wise has been an educator for 20 years, in addition to working for UCLA, Hughes Space and Communication, Monster.com, IDC, and RAND Corporation. He is known for providing very clear, methodological approaches to technology instruction and application, while being inspiring, as well. He is passionate about closing the opportunity and achievement gaps for students by empowering and equipping teachers with relevant, practical, research-based pedagogy and tools. The course is also instructed by other educators rich in technology-enriched teaching practices.

Course Objective & Learning Goals: This class will teach you how to use the world’s most popular document processing tool – Microsoft Word. Starting from the basics of how to create a simple document and progressing all the way to learning how to create professional looking parent-teacher letters, compositions, brochures, and fliers, you will learn how to master Microsoft Word as well as how to create lesson plans that teach your students how to use Microsoft Word. For the busy professional, tips are given how to embed Microsoft Word assignments into your existing lesson plans.

Lesson 1: An Overview of embedding Microsoft Word and writing composition into the classroom This session also provides a base for this class by helping participants review the challenges that their students are having in expressing their ideas in written form and by introducing a technique that all teachers can use to help students of different backgrounds overcome any fear of writing. The technique is called Low Stakes Writing and has been used successfully by educators. A summary of the technique is given by Michael Kennedy, Neurobiology Professor, UW here: https://www.umassd.edu/media/umassdartmouth/generaleducation/Low_Stakes_Writing.pdf .
Lesson 2: Microsoft Word in the Classroom – Getting Started This session discusses the how word processing technology is embedded in almost every field of study, both in educational circle and in workplace circles. Being able to produce a clearly typed out document has become the bread and butter of “official” communication in the 21st Century. Educators will learn how to incorporate this technology into a student’s learning experience as well as help students compose writing samples according to the requirements of the common core standards.
Lesson 3: Microsoft Word in the classroom– The Ribbon This lesson discusses the design of the Ribbon, a major part of MS Word’s user interface. He begins by contrasting the Ribbon from typical pulldown menus that students may be familiar with in other programs. Then he describes the organization of the commands in the Ribbon into tabs and groups within each tab, as well as the existence of contextual tabs. This lesson also discusses how to introduce the Informative Style of writing to students.
Lesson 4: The Microsoft Word – Creating a table of contents, headers and footers This session introduces how to create a well formatted publishable document with table of contents and headers and footers. This lesson also discusses the instruction of the Persuasive Style of writing to students.
Lesson 5: Microsoft Word in the Classroom – Creating and Using Custom Templates This session explains the need for document templates and the labor saved by using a template to create a series of documents that share the same formatting. Here I describe what a template is, how it is created, and how it is used to create new documents. After being able to create a template, a teacher can quickly create 3 useful document templates that they can pull out at any time: a) A parent letter template; b) A teach rubric template; c) A lesson plan template. This lesson also discusses how to introduce the Narrative Style of writing to students.
Lesson 6: Microsoft Word in the Classroom – Using Microsoft Templates This session introduces and explores the hundreds of useful Microsoft templates that teachers can use, in addition to their own original templates.
Lesson 7: Microsoft Word in the Classroom in Project Based Learning and Lesson Plan Writing Learn how to create a Microsoft Word Lesson plan that instructions students how to use Microsoft Word, and learn how to create a single project description that has different subsections for different categories of students: English Language learner, Standard English learner, and gifted.